Renegade Puffs Piece
The online new site Digital Animators recently posted an article titled ‘Renegade Animation Hosts
“Yard Sale” for Cocoa Puffs.’ It chronicles the second Cocoa Puffs ad to come out of Renegade Animation this year. Cold, Hard Flash posted a story about the first ad back in May of this year, and the ‘Yard Sale’ spot, according to the article, required much the same animation process. The article hosts a Quicktime version of the ad, which moves beautifully thanks to direction by Darrell Van Citters, but it looks as though this clip is without the final audio mix and music.
Renegades Flash animation process is discussed throughout the article, and below are a few highlights:
Flash was used to produce props and background environments and to composite the elements together.
In Yard Sale, Renegade artists used Flash to apply a design aesthetic reminiscent of the classic UPA cartoons of the 1960s, in which environments were often rendered as simple geometric shapes. “We used several unusual, flat transitions in this spot,” observed Renegade Animation technical director Nate Pacheco. In one instance a box of cereal sitting on Sonny’s kitchen table does a flip and in the space of just a few frames transforms itself into a garage. “ Flash allows us to give it snappy timing and a traditional feel,” Pacheco added.
Using Flash the way it does also enables Renegade to make quick alterations. For Sonny’s “mad” scene, for example, animators were able to quickly try out a variety of devices to suggest the bird’s delirious state of mind. “We initially put volcanoes in his eyes, then we tried swirls; we tried several different effects,” said Pacheco. “In Flash , we were able to whip it out, see how it looked and get an approval the same day.” To affect a similar change through cel animation might take several days, Pacheco added.
Tags: Renegade
